swiftbox: Use Swift out of the Box on Ubuntu, CentOS(RHEL) and Amazon Linux

Inspired by pyenv and rbenv, and having different APIs.

Installation

By default, swiftbox will be installed at /usr/bin. The working directory will be set to /opt/swiftbox for root and ~/.swiftbox for other users.

There will be two sets of Swift environments if you use both. The local one is in favor by default unless you access swiftbox with sudo. Toolchains installed by root can be used by all users.

# With curl (Recommended)
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stevapple/swiftbox/master/install.sh)"
swiftbox -v

# With git
git clone https://github.com/stevapple/swiftbox && cd swiftbox
chmod +x install.sh
./install.sh

If you encounter network error, you may consider using jsDelivr:

# Auto installation
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/stevapple/swiftbox@latest/install.sh)"
swiftbox -v

# Manual installation
sudo curl -o /usr/bin/swiftbox https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/stevapple/swiftbox@latest/swiftbox.sh
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/swiftbox
swiftbox -v

Or if you'd like to use it as a script:

# With wget
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stevapple/swiftbox/master/swiftbox.sh
chmod +x swiftbox.sh
./swiftbox.sh -v

You can specify release version by using jsDelivr or git:

# With wget
wget https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/stevapple/[email protected]/swiftbox.sh
chmod +x swiftbox.sh
./swiftbox.sh -v

# With git
git clone https://github.com/stevapple/swiftbox && cd swiftbox
git checkout v0.12.2
chmod +x swiftbox.sh
./swiftbox.sh -v

You can later install it to system by copying it to any directory in PATH:

$ sudo cp swiftbox.sh /usr/bin/swiftbox
$ which swiftbox
/usr/bin/swiftbox

Basic Usage

You may notice a [user] or [global] prefix in the output, which indicates the scope of swiftbox operations and Swift versions.

Show swiftbox version

swiftbox (and system alias) version will be shown with -v or --version.

$ swiftbox --version
0.12.3
$ swiftbox -v
0.12.3 (Ubuntu 20.04)

Check the availability of Swift versions

$ swiftbox check 5.2.4
[global] Swift 5.2.4 is kept locally and set to default.
$ swiftbox check 5.1
Swift 5.1 is available for Ubuntu 18.04
You can get it with: swiftbox get 5.1
$ swiftbox check nightly
Swift nightly build 2020-05-11-a is available for Amazon Linux 2
You can get it with: swiftbox get nightly
$ swiftbox check 2.1
Swift 2.1 does not exist or does not support your CentOS Linux version.

Manage Swift toolchains

Both release builds and the latest nightly build are available.

$ swiftbox get 5.2.2
$ swiftbox get nightly
$ swiftbox remove 5.0

Select a Swift version

$ swiftbox use 5.2.2
[user] Now using Swift 5.2.2

Disable Swift

$ sudo swiftbox close
[global] Swift 5.2.2 is now disabled.

List local toolchain versions

The active one is marked with *. If the toolchain version does not match your system version, its platform version will also be shown.

$ swiftbox list
- 2020-05-10-a
- 4.2.1 (Ubuntu 18.04)
* 5.2.2
$ sudo swiftbox list
- 2020-04-03-a
- 4.3

Clear download cache

$ swiftbox cleanup
[user] Successfully cleaned the cache.

Upgrade swiftbox

Upgrade the current copy of swiftbox to the latest version.

$ swiftbox upgrade
Successfully upgraded swiftbox from 0.12 to 0.12.2

swiftbox doesn't have a stable upgrading interface until 0.12.2. Users running swiftbox 0.12.1 and earlier are recommended to do a fresh installation to receive latest updates:

$ sudo curl -o /usr/bin/swiftbox https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/stevapple/[email protected]/swiftbox.sh
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/swiftbox
$ swiftbox upgrade

Show help page

$ swiftbox -h

And you'll see an output as follow:

swiftbox: Use Swift out of the Box on Ubuntu, CentOS(RHEL) and Amazon Linux
Usage: swiftbox [option]
       swiftbox [command] ...
Options:
  -v, --version      Show swiftbox and system (alias) version
    -s, --short      Show only swiftbox version
  -h, --help         Show help page
Commands:
  check <version>    Check the availability of Swift <version>
        nightly      Check the availability of Swift nightly builds
  get <version>      Get Swift <version> from swift.org
      nightly        Get the latest nightly build from swift.org
  list               List Swift versions on the computer
  use <version>      Select Swift <version> as default
  remove <version>   Remove swift <version> from the computer
  close              Disable Swift managed by swiftbox
  cleanup            Clear swiftbox download cache
  upgrade            Upgrade swiftbox to the latest version

Advanced Usage

Alias your system version in swiftbox

Since Ubuntu has non-LTS versions and they may be (partially) compatible with toolchains built for LTS versions, swiftbox provides built-in system version alias support from version 0.12.3 (see #1).

swiftbox allows permanent alias by specifying the version in .system-alias file in its working directory. The aliased version will be displayed in swiftbox -v output.

$ echo "20.04" > ~/.swiftbox/.system-alias
$ swiftbox -v
0.12.3 (Ubuntu 20.04)
$ swiftbox check 5.2.4
Swift 5.2.4 is available for Ubuntu 20.04
You can get it with: swiftbox get 5.2.4

For temporary alias, use environmental variable $SWIFTBOX_SYSALIAS instead:

$ export SWIFTBOX_SYSALIAS="20.04"
$ swiftbox get 5.2.4